Lesley Stahl: President Trump’s admitted tactic to “discredit” Press » And Cenk Uygur defends True Journalism

Dominique Johnson May 27, 2018 Leave a Comment

CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl revealed a remark made to her by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016 to a group of fellow journalists at the Deadline Club Awards Dinner in New York City earlier this week. It is in regards to Mr. Trump’s attitude and tactic toward the press, which in his understanding are lügenpresse (the ‘lying press’). After the first television sitdown, following Trump’s election night victory, Stahl stated, in a candid off-camera meeting earlier that year, she had pressed Trump to explain his attacks on the press.

Alongside PBS Newshour anchor Judy Woodruff:

“I said, ‘You know, that is getting tired. Why are you doing this? You’re doing it over and over. It’s boring and it’s time to end that.’”

“He said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.’ He said that. So, put that in your head for a minute.“

The story has gone ignored by the Right, who are probably defending it anyway, tooth and nail. Of course, there is a revealing danger to this; and one which will not stop the comparisons to FASCISM, or Mein Kampf’s playbook — a masterful ‘4-D chess Art-of-the-Deal’ tactic we are told!

Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian

TYT shows us the clip and gives us commentary. Ana Kasparian gives us abit of history on Journalism, and Cenk Uygur gives a very needed and passionate take on what schools of Journalism are not doing right, and he defends the idea of the Free Press. Ana Kasparian rightly states, that the Press is not supposed to be the President’s personal PR (public relations) company. However, the documentary of Adam Curtis, Century of the Self demonstrates, persons like Edward Bernays have used propaganda, peddling journals and articles to influence a political, or socio-cultural situation. Who does not believe, that there is some truth to the 1976 film, The Network. However, as Cenk Uygur states, journalism schools are teaching students to be neutral, and this is the wrong way to teach them. It is not to be neutral, but to tell the truth, no matter who it offends. Agreeing to this, I have failed to take conservative propaganda and dogmas to task, and rather fell earlier into the beliefs of what are now being called, the “dark web intellectuals.” I have been aware of the freedom of speech hypocrisy of the Right though, and especially as regards to the Alt-Right. These people do not care about freedom of speech. What they are simply hungering for, is a shift of the power-scale; and their vision (the millennial-gen conservatives) is one which would lead to restrictions on free speech, and anti-liberal actions. Many conservatives have fallen deep into the subversion. I have been attentive to conservative news and radio, since my teen years. I know their patterns, and not a single conservative can tell me the sky is rainy, when it’s clear. Conservatives have been very successful in constructing their particular social media bubbles; and President Trump’s exploitation of that has made this worse in ways, not only annoying, but worrying to Americans. Many Americans are skeptical of “corporate media,” but so must they be to these tactics.

Many, like you and myself see through it.

The Majority Report on Alt-Right Free-Speech Hypocrites

“Richard Spencer and an unknown random friend of his admit how anti-free speech they are.” This is not the only time the Alt-Right and new burgeoning conservatives of this era have admitted, they care nothing truly about free speech. What they want is power and dominion.

We abhor cult behavior and the worship built around infallible personalities: “First rule of a cult is that everyone is lying to you (FAKE NEWS) and only the leader can give you the truth.”